“Excellent businesses don’t believe in excellence, only in constant improvement and constant change.” – Tom Peters, in his book Thriving on Chaos Being excellent is a daunting goal, especially when you aren’t excellent at the beginning. Peters breaks this down into change and improvement—every day. First, change. Change is the decision point. It’s a realization that […]

Asking “why” is one of the key strategies for achieving better “lean” practices. If you are new to the company, you may see us doing something one way, and it seems like there is a better way. The tendency might be to step back and remain silent. Most new people assume that the long-term employees […]

Questions are the foundation of improvement. Yet, we often approach our jobs as if all the questions have already been asked and answered. It’s human nature: you work through a problem, find a solution that eases the challenge or yields good results, implement it, and it becomes “the way you do it.” But consider the […]

At PalletOne, we talk a lot about “lean.” It occurs to me that some of you might not have been here when this approach was first introduced. “Lean” companies believe that customers only want to pay for “value.” To deliver that, we focus on eliminating any waste associated with producing the product. Waste can come […]